Viggo was used to reading his poems in front of shadows melting together into an anonymous black mass - enthroned on the stage, spotlight encircling him like a cage of light.
Sometimes he melancholically missed his young days as a poet, flushed with the embarrassment and excitement of reading in front of even a small public. Sitting at the same level as his audience, meeting their eyes, taking in the faces of maybe twenty-something individuals with their different and personal reactions. Few people had come to listen to his poetry then, but each single person had truly come to listen to his poetry.
Now, the majority of his - mostly female - listeners weren't fans of his poetry in the first place, but fans of him. Of him.. "No," a bitter, treacherous voice whispered shrewishly they were fans of Aragorn or Walker Jerome. They looked at him without seeing who he was and heard his poems without understanding a word. The irony of it all struck him. The same absurdity he had always seen in a famous and brilliant painting being shut in a dark safe as a clever investment, forever hidden from admiring eyes, he saw now in a newspaper article on one of his poetry readings, dealing more with his rugged handsomeness, his blue eyes and lonely-cowboy-sexiness than with his writing. What was he? An acknowledged luminary of poetry? Or a victim of his own success, pilloried at the marketplace of fame?
Today, something felt different. Viggo's over-perceptive seventh sense noticed a "strong presence," as if a certain "intensity" was directed at him by someone among his spectators. A fleeting suspicion passed by, reminding him of warnings by friends that the government sent out spies or "secret agents" to gather information about him as a "subversive subject," but he shrugged it off. Prisoner of the limelight, he could not make out anyone in the dim dusty room, but the "vibrations" reaching him were not repelling. They even kept him awake and secure in a way.
Half of the visitors already shuffled their feet, impatiently waiting for the moment when they could jump into action and fight for a promising place in the queue waiting for the book signing.
As always, the signing was the more straining part. In earlier days, he'd often met up with some of the guests to his poetry readings in a pub afterwards. They had relaxed, shared some drinks and discussed his writing, or arts, poetry and politics in general. More often than not the others talked more than he did, and he was merrily and peacefully left to watch the scenery in his self-chosen stillness. He had always loved that: simply watching people.
He would never again in his life be able to rest in a corner of a pub and just watch, it seemed. He was robbed of the most simple and basic privilege every child enjoys.
These days, everybody concentrated on him. It was stressful, getting all their names right, thinking of appropriate answers in not two much of a script but not too personal either, smiling for their photos, writing a dedication according to their wishes, and all of this hundreds of times over more than five hours. He was exhausted, drained from trying to cope with the expectations of each single fan who had waited patiently for her 20 seconds with Viggo, paying attention to all their little wishes and suggestions and questions, showing the proper measure of admiration for their presents, and getting rid of them without behaving unkindly.
Viggo thought it would be less arduous to conquer the Antarctic ice. At least he wouldn't meet anyone for weeks, and even a polar bear having it in mind to eat him alive couldn't frighten him more than all these women who wanted pretty much the same, come to think about it.
It was not that he didn't like them. The room was crowded by sympathetic women, intelligent, witty and charming. In the old days he would have been glad if he had met some of them at an after-reading pub discussion, but the whole situation was perverted now, and nothing could be right within this big falseness.
When it was over and the hall emptied, Viggo looked up for the first time - the realisation hit him right between the eyes. He knew what the subconscious premonition, the psychic sensation of feeling someone's energy had been about:
Sean was here. His dazzling smile, as he walked up to Viggo, effortlessly beautiful as ever, rolling of lissom hips, candid light in his eyes.. he had taken Viggo's breath away the first time he saw him, and every time ever since when he closed his eyes and thought of him. He still took his breath away now.
The electric impulse pushed Viggo vertical. Sean enclosed him in his embrace; Viggo felt embarrassed, noticing that he was trembling all over, while Sean held him safe, calm and sure.
'Would you mind going out with me for a drink? Or are you too tired?'
Viggo shook his head. 'No.. I'm not tired.'
Half an hour ago, he had felt worn out enough to lie down and die then and there, but the tiredness was pumped out of his body the very moment Sean touched him. He hadn't felt as wide awake as for a month, as if his batteries were recharged with one powerful surge, almost searing his nerves with overdrive.
'Good. I've come to talk to you.'
Talk? They had last met and fucked in Toronto, and they had last talked.. when? - During their trip together in New Zealand, it seemed. Since the LotR filming was over, they met on rare occasions, and they usually skipped the talking. Since the first time they had had sex, body language had replaced words.
Viggo's body had learned to instinctively assess the meaning of all the various little sounds Sean made during sex. The whole arsenal of pants, sighs, grunts and hums, covered the spectrum from, "Give me more, and fast," to "ouch, that hurt," from raw desire to lush pleasure, from overwhelming tenderness to animalistic lust, from jolly amusement to contented fatigue. Viggo sensed gradual differences. Just like the Inuit have one hundred words for different kinds of snow and inhabitants of the jungle use as many words for a multitude shades of green.
Viggo's flesh, skin and nerves not only interpreted Sean's signals, he also intuitively adapted to them in the appropriate way, like an automatic gear shift follows the given speed without thought.
They could do everything to each other and with each other. And they did. Trusting each other far beyond just the rational conviction of knowing each other as decent men, they blindly trusted each other with their reflexes; like trapeze artists, flying high, never doubting to be caught and hold.
They could be everything with each other and for each other. And they were. Innocently nefarious, licentiously experimental, languorously tender, happily perverted, lividly salacious.
Words seemed ludicrously inadequate when they moved together in effervescent passion, when each touch and kiss flashed out truth and seriousness, eternal dedication.
But when the day of good-bye came nearer, Viggo knew their future had to be negotiated or there would be none. He still couldn't tell what their relationship meant to Sean, what Sean thought about them, how he would classify what they shared.
Their bodies communicated in perfect trust and understanding, learning each other till they were acquainted with every little reaction and unconscious movement, while - in an odd case of inverse proportion - mute awkwardness and alienation had slowly settled between their minds.
For Viggo especially this was unusual, and very unlike himself. If any man was fit to talk over issues in a relationship, it was him. And he never had been into casual sex - not for moral reasons, it just wasn't his thing. Also, they had been able to talk quite fairly as long as they were just friends.
He began to suffer from their not-talking, but also always had lots of excuses for what he knew was essentially his cowardice, his anxiety of losing Sean with "pressing." He never found the right time. And what was the benefit of defining what they had anyway? It would become words, just words. Whatever they called it, in practice it could never be more than what they had now. Too many other obligations, complications, considerations stood in the way. So why make it harder with discussing feelings? Their bodies didn't seem to need their relationship to be sorted out.
On their last night together in New Zealand Viggo fought back the words that longed to be set loose and linger in Sean's ear.
They had taken turns fucking each other, in the literal sense of "like there was no tomorrow", and in the end they lay wrapped around each other, glued together with sweat and semen.
Too tired and drained to talk, they had fallen asleep as one body with two heads and eight limbs.
And then, there had been no tomorrow.
*
Now, they sat opposite each other in a tiny, cozy little restaurant, and after they had covered family, job and mutual friends with their conversation, Viggo coyly asked, 'You said you wanted to talk? about what?'
'About your book.'
Summary: This is an interpretation of Viggo's book "Linger" as a story
Rated: R
Categories: Actor RPS Pairing: Sean/Viggo
Warnings: NoneChallenges:
Series: LingerChapters: 4 Completed: Yes
Word count: 7370 Read: 3378
Published: 06 Aug 2009 Updated: 06 Aug 2009